Noise
by Cloudhead
Summary: It's four o'clock in the morning, and Xion can't sleep. There are some things you just don't mess with, and a girl's sleep is one of them. This is a minor AU-see my profile. No pairings, platonic or otherwise. ONESHOT.


**Yes, here we are again, with more Kingdom Hearts. This is a simple oneshot meant as a sort of 'breather episode' before the next major story arc. I got the inspiration for this when I was going to bed one night and the exact same noise in the story was keeping me awake. This takes place in the same universe as Stupid Questions (a universe which I have decided to call The Reluctant Father—see my new profile), but you do not need to read that story to understand anything.**

**Xion may be slightly OOC here, but given the circumstances, I say it's believable. :)**

**DISCLAIMER: Kingdom Hearts belongs to Disney and Square Enix. I do not stand to profit from this work in any way. Though if those guys would just let me help make story decisions regarding Xion, I could make KH3 so much better… :)**

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**Noise**

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_Fssssssshhhhh…_

Xion had awoken from a perfectly good dream to this annoying noise. At first, she thought someone had flushed, but it wouldn't stop. It was consistent, and it was getting more grating on her ears and her mind each passing second.

_Fssssssshhhhh…_

She had tried everything—playing songs in her head, covering her ears, even talking to herself to drown out the noise. Nothing had worked. She was currently engaged in a battle of endurance—it had to stop at some point, right?

_Fssssssshhhhh…_

Her endurance broke. She couldn't take the noise anymore. Any attempt at sleep would fail unless the noise stopped, and it didn't sound like it was going to let up any time soon. So, instead of lying around waiting, she decided to find a new place to sleep.

She went to the common room to sleep on the sofa. She was going to sleep tonight, darn it, and if Saix didn't like it, he could go take it up with Axel.

The room was two things—dark and empty. Xion was perfectly fine with this, because it had another trait as a result—the room was _quiet. _She could sleep here, and again, she didn't care what anyone thought of her sleeping on a couch at this point.

Unfortunately, the Noise (it felt like an entity now) had other plans. No sooner had she laid down on the biggest couch she could find in the room when she heard it again.

_Fssssssshhhhh…_

She tried all the tactics she had tried before. Of course, results were once again unsatisfactory. She got up, rubbed her eyes while gritting her teeth and went to go wake Roxas up.

Roxas was fast asleep, snoring loudly. The snoring, of course, meant that Xion couldn't sleep here, but she never had that hope—the Noise had followed her in here, as well. It wasn't like Roxas could help the snoring, anyway, so she ignored it and went along with her plan.

"Pst. Roxas."

_zzzzzzzzzzzzz…_

"Roxas. Wake up."

_zzzzzzzzzzzz…_

"Roxas!"

This was a whisper-yell, but it seemed to do the trick. Roxas' eyes opened a bit, and he moaned.

"Roxas. Are you up?"  
"…mmmph… Xion…"  
"Yes, it's me. Wake up."  
"…hmm… Still dark…"  
"Exactly. There is noise all over the castle. I can't sleep. I could use your help right now."  
"…mrrgh… Talk to Axel…"

Xion would have retorted, but Roxas was snoring again. Despite feeling more than a little miffed, she decided to take his advice and went off to wake up her other friend.

Axel, surprisingly enough, didn't snore, and his room was the quietest so far, despite all the stuff lying around the room in haphazard, messy piles. Xion almost considered sleeping on the floor and explaining in the morning, but then she heard this:

_Fssssssshhhhh…_

The Noise had followed her into Axel's room.

Xion stared at the wall the sound seemed to be emanating from the way one might stare at a barking dog at four in the morning. Actually, that's was the time at this point—Axel's clock said so. In fact, now that she listened, she could hear the analog clock going _tick-tock, tick-tock, tick-tock… _She got out of there before she could start thinking of ways to destroy clocks.

She had one more idea. She went to see how quiet Lexaeus' room was. Surely, the bedroom of the Silent Hero had to have silence. If anyone didn't like it, they could take up with _her Keyblade._

It was indeed quiet. Xion listened carefully, but heard nothing. She began to lie down (Lexaeus' floor was far cleaner than Axel's), but she was asleep before her head hit the floor.

She was asleep for approximately 13.814 seconds.

_Fssssssshhhhh…_

She was about to scream in frustration, but then she had a better idea. She got up, calmly walked into the closet that held the water heater and summoned her Keyblade.

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Saix's eyes opened. He had had his room soundproofed after the incident with Axel, but years of leading the quirky cast of characters that made up Organization XIII had given him an innate, potent Stupidity Sense. This was why he always seemed to turn up in the most inconvenient places.

He went to the attached bathroom, following his sense. When he turned the knob on the faucet all the way, water failed to pour from the pipes, unless you counted a few tiny, pathetic drops. Saix remembered that Vexen was supposed to be testing the new, ultra-efficient water heater tonight. He also remembered that, in the chaos of the day (more giant heartless had appeared that day than any other day in months), he had forgotten to announce it to everyone.

There were exactly two people in the Organization stupid enough to 'take things into their own hands.' Roxas could sleep through pretty much anything short of an actual boss battle (and maybe not even that would wake him up), so that left the puppet.

Saix successfully managed to restrain himself and not give in to the temptation to immediately dusk Xion (Axel would literally kill him, and Xemnas insisted that double heart collection rates were worth having her in the Organization). Instead, he dark corridored to the water heater.

Xion was passed out in front of what was once a glorious piece of water-heating technology but was now a twisted hunk of metal with multiple holes in it. Her Keyblade was still out. The room was lightly flooded, as was the rest of the hallway.

_Concentrate on the hearts, _Saix told himself. _The wonderful hearts and their ultimate masterpiece in the sky. Think of all the hearts it's collecting…_

He picked up Xion and carried her to her room (a task which he hoped he would never have to repeat). He then left a sticky note on her door, signed with a crescent moon:

_SEE ME_

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Looking back on it, Xion got off pretty easy. Saix may have hated the kid as much as a Nobody could hate anyone, but sincere apologies were so rare in Organization XIII that he would have appreciated one from a dusk. Or maybe he was just getting soft because of Axel's influence. Either way, Xion was let off with the loss of all her challenge sigils and dishwashing duty for a month.

Secretly, she didn't care. Nor did she care that Vexen despised her now, even more so than before. Because, secretly, she was proud of herself for defeating the Noise. Forever afterward, she was _extremely _protective of her sleep. Not that she needed to be—word spread fast in the Organization, and no one was going to risk being annihilated by her just as the water heater had been, puppet or not.

The moral of the story is, never, ever mess with a girl's sleeping patterns. Also, _don't piss off Xion._

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**THE END**

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**I hope you enjoyed this short story. It's my attempt to show off two character traits Xion has in my headcanon—first, when she does get angry (rare as it may be), she gets **_**scary, **_**and second, she is better at coming up with immediate solutions to problems than at thinking the logical consequences of those 'solutions' through. Both of these **_**will **_**become important in later stories.  
**

**There is an Easter egg in this fic—I will take a (reasonable) prompt from the first person to point it out in a review. Think of it as a way for me to say 'thanks for paying attention!' :)**

**Thanks for reading, and tune in next time! Have I got quite a story in store for you…**


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